Lest there was any doubt, broadband subscribers who are subject to data caps often respond to them by adjusting their Internet use throughout the month.

The Authors Guild wants Congress to revise the copyright law in a way that encourages Web companies like Google to join with writers in the fight against ebook piracy.

A four-year privacy initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium advanced today when the group published tentative standards for implementing do-not-track requests that users can send through their browsers. The proposed compliance standard generally calls for ad networks and other companies to stop collecting data from users who have turned on the do-not-track signals, except for auditing, security, debugging and frequency capping purposes.

Three years ago, Time Warner Cable began charging subscribers a $3.95 monthly fee to rent a cable modem. Today, that fee has more than doubled to $8 a month. That increase serves as one example of pricing problems in the broadband and cable industry, presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.) and Ed Markey (D-Ma.) say in a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Thomas Dart, the crusading sheriff of Cook County, Ill., recently protested online sex trafficking by pressuring Visa and Mastercard to stop doing business with the listings site Backpage.com. Now, Backpage has responded by deciding to let people post free adult services ads.

On June 20, 2006, the BBC's Web site published the article "Heiress killed in fit of jealousy," which discussed the manslaughter conviction of Richard Holtby, who was found to have strangled his former fiance. This May, Google delisted links to the piece from its search results in the U.K. after receiving a request to take it down, the BBC says. The search engine didn't tell the BBC who made that request, or the requests to delist the 181 BBC.com articles that no longer appear on Google's search results pages.

In 2007, Stephanie Lenz posted to YouTube a 29-second clip of a toddler dancing while Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" played in the background. The music company Universal, which hires people to scour YouTube for clips that potentially infringe copyright, sent Google a takedown notice. The move sparked an 8-year legal battle, which this week landed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

A new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University suggests that Web users' gender can determine whether they are served ads by Google that could lead to higher-paying opportunities. Google responds that advertisers can choose to target the audience they want to reach.

Sheriff Thomas Dart of Cook County, Ill. recently asked Visa and Mastercard to stop processing payments for Backpage.com's adult services. Both companies not only agreed to Dart's request, but decided to go even further by terminating all business with the site. Digital rights advocates are now calling on the companies to reinstate Backpage.com, arguing that it hasn't violated any laws.

Earlier this week, Sprint proudly trumpeted its new "All-In" plan, which offered consumers a smartphone and unlimited high-speed data, text and voice, all for $80 a month. There was just one catch: The company revealed in the small print that it would throttle video speeds to 600 Kbps.